There are many causes for disease but it seems too much of a coincidence that quite a few people I’ve encountered who have developed breast cancer have had spouses who were unfaithful to them. They have lost their breasts, and sometimes even their lives to these partners who claim to love them and are wondering why this disease has mysteriously developed and befallen them.

One wonders why the love of one person doesn’t seem to be enough for people who are compulsive cheaters. It’s ironic that when these cheaters suffer marginal heartache when they are dropped by someone who has finally woken up to reality or who has destroyed themselves with terminal disease, they still don’t get a clue as to why it has happened to them.

It’s like they wonder why people shouldn’t be at their disposal and this callous and heartless treatment of people who love us is often masked by a charming and agreeable demeanor… After all, how would they get their future emotional Roadkill to stand in the middle of the road frozen while they emotionally mow them over and kill them.

Whether or not we are conscious of our actions of not, each actions sows a seed of the same quality for payback in the future. It is extreme hubris to think that we shall never suffer the consequences of our decisions even if we say that we meant well or that we didn’t mean to do it.

It would be miraculous if the people who are the perpetrators of emotional assault and battery develop awareness of their ways. So this post is for everyone else who have a working conscience and some sense of responsibility and humanity, do not allow yourself to be involved with someone who has utter disregard for your happiness and wellbeing even if they are magnetic, sexy, attractive or whatnot.

Remember, the predator needs to have a method to lure prey in willingly, it saves them the time and effort of chasing. When in doubt, actions speak louder than words. If they really respected you and cared about you, they wouldn’t put you through all the misery.

They may claim to care about you… Perhaps they do… Like they care about their new possessions or acquisitions. However, if they have the gall to hurt you, it means that they ultimately care about themselves the most and will put others second, or last, even you.

According to the perspective of each person, they do not deserve whatever misfortunes happen to them. It might be true in some cases but it is not for the person themselves to determine since when we judge ourselves, it can be wildly biased.

After all, even when no one wants to admit it, people tend to regard themselves highly and think that their presuppositions or assumptions are faultless. On a few occasions I’ve happened upon persons who are wondering why their relationships have blown up in their faces, conveniently forgetting that they are cheaters and have hurt more than one person very much.

They wonder why they have lost the supposed love of their lives or the current person whom they are focusing their attention on and claim to be grieving when what caused at least some part of the pain and bewilderment is just why they were the ones who were dropped first when they were the ones who were supposed to do the dropping.

They are bewildered as to why life can be so cruel when the fact of the matter is that they have been cruel to many others who have taken them seriously and have become their victims without even a second glance or a second thought from them. Could they be considered sociopaths? Many of them could be.

The thing about using people and discarding them like yesterday’s newspaper is that we don’t age backwards… We get older and eventually when we are tired of being irresponsible with others, what we have done catches up with us.

The past is not only in the past as these bewildered people wish to believe when they wonder why so much unhappiness eventually befalls them… They are so bewildered when they realize that everything that they have done to hurt others no matter what motivations they had comes full circle to bite them in the ass.

When that time comes, there is nowhere to run… After all, how do you escape the monster that is yourself? Think very carefully every time you lie, cheat, and steal because even when you have forgotten or run out of health and willpower to play with others, you will still have to pay the price and you might not have the strength to handle it.

In a perfect world, people would have respect for the emotional and physical boundaries of others. However, we exist in a world which is still in the process of learning how to better itself and whose inhabitants think have the slight problem of differentiating their business from other people’s business.

It then behooves us to set and guard our boundaries wisely without becoming too cautious to the point of paranoia or becoming too vigilant to the point of aggression. We must learn to stand our ground and find a way to not adopt other people’s mental rubbish as our own.

Opinions sprout around us abundantly however it does not mean that we should take everyone’s advice and lose our own principles and convictions. However we must not go overboard with disregarding the input of others arbitrarily.

It falls upon us to keep the essential boundaries in place while being flexible and open minded enough to adjust and learn accordingly.

Have we become so jaded that we approach love as a form of power play? We gauge each move and see whether the other person responds and we weigh our next move accordingly and see whether it would secure us the leverage we wish to prevail in the game? This form of approach is already dubious even outside the realm of romance, because the crafty shrewdness undermines honestly, honour, integrity, and what more, the highest of all virtues, love.

We are so uncomfortable at losing power or control over any situation that if we so much as express more emotion than the other and it is not reciprocated, we feel that we have not made the ‘right’ moves and it confers power upon the other over us. Perhaps, in a manner of speaking, this is true. At a base level, a love relationship is not immune to politics and plays for dominance, but this sort of approach demeans what it truly means to be in love with someone.

How averse are we to being hurt that we are willing to protect ourselves at any cost–even from ourselves or from someone else who may break down our walls and love us? There is nothing wrong with loving another, what causes us pain is the expectation that the love would be requited and it need not be. Yes it would be all the lovelier if the love was reciprocated, but it need not be.

We are capable of truly loving all by our lonesome, as sad as it might be. We may only hope but we may not expect that the other be able to or should be capable of loving us back in the same manner or with the same intensity. When we love, we must remember that it should be with no strings attached, otherwise, it detracts from the essence of love which gives freely without expecting another in return–though perhaps hoping for reciprocation.

We have become so sophisticated with so many facets of our lives that it has spilled over to the realm of love and dating. We have become so versed with saving our faces and advancing our own interest that we have found many ways of being defensive when it comes to relating with another in the realm of love and romance so that we minimise our losses and are able to retract immediately and safely save our faces if it seems that the other is not on the page as us.

We become so obsessed with winning the dating ‘game’ that we lose sight of the bigger picture altogether. We have convinced ourselves that we date and love in order to advance our self-interest and gain the most advantage without exposing ourselves or being unduly vulnerable or hurt. If we think about it, this strategy almost sounds like the way we would undergo negotiations for business or even a strategy which might apply to warfare, and it is up for debate whether this is the best way to go about falling in love.

We cannot truly love when we are more obsessed with winning and preserving our own image. Love entails a certain vulnerability and it is risky up to the point that it may actually be so painful that we may wonder whether we would survive a heartbreak.

We may see someone and wish to gauge whether they love us more and we may employ tactics which would assure us that they love us more or that we would not be hurt, we may also wish to ascertain their emotions for us before we surrender our own. It is but prudent, yet at the same time, it robs the spontaneity and the raw authenticity which true fiery and passionate love is characterised by.

Love at its purest form is unguarded and undefended. How often can we say that we have loved like this? Perhaps, we may only recall our adolescent days when we did not know any better–this was the only time wherein we loved with abandon–the first and perhaps even the last time we allowed ourselves to be carried away by our emotions, only to be destroyed by it.

After the first debilitating heartbreak, we start to employ more armour and adapt more defence mechanisms so that we may not experience the destruction and the pain we have gone through the first time around. It definitely does have its uses, it protects us from completely falling apart and allows us to function without being destroyed.

However, it also takes away the raw beauty of love–the authenticity which is inherently unprotected. When did we suddenly regard dating and love as a game or a battle where we must win at all costs and make sure that the ‘opponent’ surrenders or submits before we do? It is true that the person who loves the most is at the mercy of the person who loves less but at the same time, the person who loves the most experiences love in a more genuine manner.

By all means, in business or in our careers, we must strive to ‘win’ and ‘prevail’ but love is not a competition wherein devious strategies would benefit the players. Love is not even a terrain wherein winning would necessarily benefit anyone. Sometimes when we are so calculated in the realm of love and even if we feel that we have secured victory by guarded and cautious moves, we have actually lost.

In our unhealthy obsession with winning in the realm of romance, we might actually cheat ourselves out of a wonderful soul-searing and life-changing experience called true love, which entails that we put down all our defences and is counter-intuitive to our notion of self-preservation.

It is all too temping to think that we may carry on with being cavalier with the feelings of others with impunity because there will come a certain time when it may catch up with us and it will be too late. Without appreciating the perspective of the other side, there are some people who see fit to use people for their own pleasure and gratification without a full appreciation of the other as a human being and it will be to their eventual detriment, in terms of karma as well as their own moral degradation.

Every time we act in a dishonourable manner, we chip away at our moral fibre and before we know it. There will be none left to speak of and it would almost be a far cry to consider ourselves as human beings worthy of respect. It may be all too enjoyable to use people like they are objects and discard them once something newer catches our eye but it would simply be a waste of a perfectly good karmic account since there is no action that is immune to the laws of cause and effect.

When we hurt another due to our self-interest and for our own benefit, we must not be surprised when what goes around eventually does come around. By that time, it may be too late to rectify the wrongs which have been committed. It behooves us to consider that every time we do a hurtful act, we are harming ourselves as well as the other. When it comes down to it, is the eventual damage and fallout even worth it?

When we reach our thirties and forties, many of our friends and acquaintances have most likely gotten married and already have kids or are having kids. Being single among our peers might make us stand out like a sore thumb and make us wonder whether there might be something wrong with ourselves–and similarly others might have the same thoughts about us. After all, if we were probably more emotionally skilful or otherwise appealing, shouldn’t someone have snagged us by now?

It might also make us emotionally inept. Lacking experiences, we might be wont to believe the anecdotes of our married pals who do not have a successful marriage and therefore have the time to still hang out with us and ‘kiss and tell’ so to speak. The successfully married ones are less wont to tell interesting stories or spend time elaborating about the virtues of being single or go on about the woes of being ‘too loved’ by their wives that they feel that they are emotionally tethered and unable to be free.

We must beware of drinking water from a polluted well even when it’s the only one available. At the risk of stating the obvious, these unhappily married people are the polluted wells I speak of, they are widely available and have the time to share their emotional toxins and negative thoughts and woes with anyone who would care to listen, and we might think that their tales are cautionary and informative of what might be to come for ourselves.

We must not seek advise or tips on having a healthy relationship or marriage from people who have failed miserably at it, despite their protests that they had nothing to do with the pitiable state of their relationship and claim to be the hapless victims in the situation. As a friend, perhaps we might lend an ear to them if they need to share their story but we must discern that their predicaments need not create a map of fear in our heads about what relationships might be like–and make us cling to being single and causing us our chances at having a happy and healthy relationship.

When we drink (or take advise) from ‘polluted wells’ (negative people) we are setting ourselves up to fail by being contaminated by their thoughts, behaviours, and misconceptions. We have probably lived in this world long enough to know that each experience requires our participation and it is very rare to find a relationship failing at the hands of merely only person. We may wish to provide more wholesome point of views to our unfortunate friends and help them improve their relationships instead of enabling their negative thought patterns, or even worse, adopting their tainted view on relationships.

Do not seek advice about health from a sick person. Do not seek guidelines on a successful relationship from someone who has failed/failing/ailing relationships. It is simply this simple. If we forget this fact, we will doom ourselves to follow in their footsteps and we will have no one but ourselves to blame for allowing it.

Perhaps there is some virtue in dragging out a situation for longer than is needed, but I can’t seem to see it. I think that there are some things which have gone out of fashion together with the horse and carriage, and the manual churning of butter. While advertising seems to extol the values of good old fashioned processes, I think that extending a courtship past a certain point just feels pointless and reeks of disrespect for the time and feelings of the other person.

Time is money and in the realm of budding relationship it also equates to emotional investment which is the currency of emotional connections. The more time spent on getting to know the person may just equate to more emotional pain when the bandage is suddenly ripped out and the final results kick in. I think that past a certain point, mulling over the viability of a relationship is just plain indecisiveness in disguise.

When we get to a certain age, we have an idea of what we prefer and it’s just insulting to claim to have no idea what one feels. If it happens to be true then we might be emotionally retarded and that is just another matter entirely. Nevertheless, it’s never too soon to to cut someone loose when we don’t have the intention of carrying through a committed relationship with them. It’s cruel to drag a situation on with no intention of taking it to a more serious level.

We live in a fast-paced world whether we like it or not and when we take too much time to decide on whether someone is right for us, we might risk disrespecting their precious time and inadvertently lead them on–and this is just plain wrong and many other things along those lines. It is true that only fools rush in but at the same time, taking too long is just similarly foolish, but only in a different manner.

It’s all well and good to go at snail’s pace during the time when there was still no electricity or even no internet, but in this day and age where everyone needs to earn a living and is not merely in a manor waiting for their servants to cater to their every move, we must be mindful of the opportunity costs our dillydallying may be causing the other person–or even ourselves if the other person decides to go for other options due to the prolonged mind games and lack of emotional clarity and direction.

In our need to be constantly entertained, we enjoy compelling and dramatic love stories however we risk the tendency of art bleeding into real life and while we might enjoy the idea, very erratic and highly emotional romantic connection, as thrilling as it may be, does not lend itself well to a stable and long-term committed relationship.

We must balance our hunger for excitement with what is feasible in the long run and whatever people may say, an emotional rollercoaster does not benefit anyone and must be avoided at all costs. When we get to know a person, we get a sense of how they might be but we must patiently allow time and continued interaction to unravel them and reveal whether their temperaments suit us.

When we find someone we are able to talk about anything and everything with, it is simply magical and we feel that the energy is palpable. There is an intermingling if the joint energies which draws us magnetically towards each other and sustains itself.

The thrill and novelty eventually does run out and the real magic which happens us more down to earth and involves a sincere friendship and a capable to be open and discuss differences in order to reach and understanding.

We know it when we have found that one in a million person. It’s electric. It’s sacred. It’s…simply magic.

I can understand mulling over big purchases and researching before finally buying them because money does not grow on trees, but for some reason, I cannot understand when this attitude spills over to the realm of dating and picking a mate. Logically speaking, since our choice of a life partner can make or break us, it is not something which can be entered into cavalierly and requires careful thought. So perhaps a prolonged period of observation and interaction is justified before making any conclusion.

Be it that it makes sense to be cautious about our selection of a mate, I also believe that there is only as much as we can find out with observation and surface interaction and sometimes, it’s better to start dating seeing each other exclusively in order to find out more of the nuances up close and personal and whether we can live with these quirks. There is only as much detail that “window shopping” for a partner can provide and sometimes, we must simply make up our mind and jump in.

It is way too idealistic to think that upon a few interactions and with simply dating or being just friends that we can determine whether this person is the one whom we would be willing to make a life long commitment to. It’s a romantic idea but it cannot hold up to reality because assessing from the entry point, it does not give us enough details or insight to make an informed decision. It also places too much pressure on the person whom we are considering to be able to measure up to whatever phantom criteria we fancy they must meet.

Experience is the best teacher and it is the same way with relationships. if we choose to merely be friends or date indefinitely, it wastes precious time and is counterproductive to our aim of getting to know the person well enough to know whether having a relationship with them would be feasible in the long run. Nothing replaces the actual experience of being in a relationship to find out whether the relationship can stand the test of time, it is not something which can be preempted and prejudged.

It puts an inordinate amount of pressure on ourselves too when we nurse the odd idea that if we enter into a relationship with someone that they would be ‘the one’ we are to make lifelong commitments too because we must always consider the inherent reality of life which is that everything is subject to change. We may change our minds further down the road but it does not mean that we should cheat ourselves out of what can be a potentially beautiful experience.

In thinking that we must research for as long as we can before determining whether we are to go into a relationship, it shows that we are risk averse and that we which that our decisions be final and lasting. It is understandable that as humans, we value security and permanence, however it may be too much weight for the reality to bear. In order to experience life to the fullest, some measure of risk must be taken and we must give ourselves the leeway of making mistakes.

Finding an ideal partner who will be our first love, our first relationship, and our lifelong partner till death do us part would be a dream come true indeed, however, this scenario is too perfect that it would be very rare for it to be that way. When we get attached to such standards, we sometimes forget that we are ourselves fallible and imperfect and expecting everything to fall into place in an ideal and dreamy manner is indulging in daydreams which, as pleasant as they might be, are a waste of time and would be detrimental to our finding someone who would hold up to the light of day as our romantic partner.

After a reasonable period of observation and interaction, it might be best for both parties to make up their mind and decide whether to give it a go, or just let it go. Having uncertain situations drag on for an unspecified amount of time does not benefit both parties involved and furthermore reflects a lack of respect for the other person. It might also cause the other party to perceive this lack of respect for their precious time and encourage them to move on.